Nope, he is not a broken shell of a man but a surly, passive-aggressive self-centred jerk. How dare Madelyne hold him to his marriage vows and other promises he made, to expect him to fulfill his responsibilities as a husband and father! How dare she feel neglected after Scott could not even be bothered to give her one single phone-call when she was going through the final days of her pregnancy and giving birth to Nathan! And funny how it was only then that Cyclops discovered that he could not stay in Alaska, after living there, apparently contentedly and largely incident-free, for at least ca. a year story-time. Not to mention that before that he had been happy to be on an extended leave from the X-Men ever since UXM #138; during that time he tended to get involved with the X-Men's agenda mostly by accident (being shipwrecked on Magneto's island with Lee Forrester) or in ways that did not involve the fate of mutantkind (galivanting through space to fight the Brood, being targeted for personal revenge by Mastermind).

At what point in the above did Jean return? That always seems to be the deciding factor. Jean is Scott's Lois Lane in the eyes of many fans and many fans-become-writers, the latter of whom have the power to push their vision onto the comic book page. In the eyes of such fan/writers, Madelyn should not have existed, and didn't even really exist in her own right, because somehow in some people's minds a clone is not a unique individual (which makes no sense to me). Once Jean is in the picture, Madelyn must be dispensed with in the most brutal manner possible, because Lois Lane must always be Superman's girlfriend, with no serious competition. Plus, Madelyn was never more than just a plot device any way, a stand-in for Jean, made so obvious by being made a clone of her. It wasn't really Scott (a fictional character with no free will) who was the jerk. It was the writer at the time. But unfortunately Scott the fictional character was made to play out his life decisions in accordance with the whims of the current fan/writer, who cared more about who is paired with whom than about staying true to the heroic ideal that Scott should always have represented.

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He chose to marry Madelyne of his own free will and let's not forget that if he hadn't done so he could easily have decided to join his father and the Starjammers, i.e. to abandon Earth and mutant concerns for an undetermined time, maybe forever. He was seriously considering that option at the time.

He should have gone. I remember that story line. Without Jean to tether him to Earth, he should have gone on a space adventure with his Dad. Had I been the writer, he would have done it, and, if Editorial permitted, I would have written a Starjammers mini-series featuring Cyclops.

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To speak of apocalypse looming etc. is just being overly melodramatic in order to justify Scott's selfish and primarily personal decision (to present his wife with a fait accompli, to abandon her and to expect her to adapt her life to his wishes without question, i.o.w. to conform to a 19th-century concept of marriage). The fact is that before Nathan's birth things had been unusually quiet - as attested by a break in the narrative covering most of Madelyne's pregnancy. The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants was lying low and about to become the government-sponsored Freedom Force, and as UXM #201 was to highlight, the X-Men clearly were of the opinion that they could manage without being led by Cyclops. And when Cyclops ran out on his wife and son in X-Factor #1 it was not because of some acute or even "looming" crisis, but in order to revisit his old girlfriend. It was, at most, a purely personal "emergency". The setting-up of X-Factor, Inc., only came later, and then was handled in such an idiotic fashion that it may have caused more harm than good in the long run by fueling anti-mutant prejudice in the general population. So maybe it would have been better if Scott had stayed in Alaska? At least he would have been there to defend his family against the Marauders' attack, and there really was nothing to prevent the rest of the O5 to visit Scott there. (Madelyne got on well with Scott's teammates, she even sent the X-Men an invitation to visit the Summerses in Anchorage when they briefly moved to San Francisco during SWII).

Scott should never have abandoned his wife and child under any circumstances. But Lois Lane must always win when fan/writers hold the reins.

Nevertheless, somebody somewhere in Editorial must have grasped at last that Scott was being made to look like a jerk, and so we got the story where Scott and Jean raised Nathan in the far future. So Nathan, at least, was not mistreated. Madelyn, however, was sorely ill used. Because she wasn't Lois Lane.